Easy for you, hard for me

when creating a new process under Windows NT using CreateProcess and specifing NULL for the environment block (lpEnvironment), the child application will inherit the environment of the calling application. Alternately, I could specify a pointer to a another environent block.

My problem is, that the environment of an application does not change, even if a user sets a new environment in the control panel. So how can I be notified when the environment changes (or alternatly: how can I obtain the NEW USER-CHANGED environment and pass it to the child process?). I heard that "GetEnvironmentStrings" does always return the environment as it was, when the application started (it will not change, when the user modifies the environment using the control panel).

Hmm, I hope anyone understands, what I am trying to say..
Sorry for only giving 70 points, but that is all I have :-(

By default, a child process inherits the environment variables of its parent process. However, you can specify a different environment for the child process by creating a new environment block and passing a pointer to it as a parameter to the CreateProcess function.

The GetEnvironmentStrings function returns a pointer to the environment block of the calling process. This should be treated as a read-only block; do not modify it directly. Instead, use the SetEnvironmentVariable function to change an environment variable. When you are finished with the environment block obtained from GetEnvironmentStrings, call the FreeEnvironmentStrings function to free the block.

The GetEnvironmentVariable function determines whether a specified variable is defined in the environment of the calling process, and, if so, what its value is.

For more information, there is the examples of Changing Environment Variables.
===============================================
Changing Environment Variables

Each process has an environment block associated with it. The environment block consists of a null-terminated block of null-terminated strings (meaning there are two null bytes at the end of the block), where each string is in the form:

name=value

All strings in the environment block must be sorted alphabetically by name. Because the equal sign is a separator, it must not be used in the name of an environment variable.

By default, a child process inherits a copy of the environment block of the parent process. The following example demonstrates how to create a new environment block to pass to a child process.

If you want the child process to inherit most of the parent’s environment with only a few changes, save the current values, make changes for the child process to inherit, create the child process, and then restore the saved values, as shown following.

LPTSTR lpszOldValue;
TCHAR tchBuf[BUFSIZE];
BOOL fSuccess;

// lpszOldValue gets current value of "varname", or NULL if "varname"
// environment variable does not exist. Set "varname" to new value,
// create child process, then use SetEnvironmentVariable to restore
// original value of "varname". If lpszOldValue is NULL, the "varname"
// variable will be deleted.

Tiutin, I think you misunderstood my question a little bit.
As you mentioned in your answer, GetEnvironmenStrings returns the environment block of the calling application. But this block is the environment block of the calling application when it started!

That means, when during the lifetime of your program, the user changes the system environment, you will never notice that; but I need to notice it...

I'm not familiar with anything in the control panel that affects the environment settings. The environment is DOs stuff and the control panel is windows stuff. When the user changes the windows settings with the control panel all applications receive a message (WM_SETTINGSCHANGED or something like that) But this has no relation to changing the DOS environment settings.

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